I bought a pony a month and half ago that I trained for 7 years. She was wild until she was 16 and abused. When I decided to buy her, it was because she went dead lame and I wanted to be sure she was safe for the rest of her life.

She is 23 years old, 13.1 hands and a mare in every sense of the word. But she can jump. When she was younger and in shape, we jumped 3'6" on a regular basis.

After less than a month of living outside, she became sound... very sound. She was playing in our outdoor ring and jumped out. It's a 4' fence. And she did it from a stand still.

I am now bringing her back into work, but she is beginning to get bored. I lunge her 5-6 days a week to get her strength back and I let her jump 1-2 feet to keep her on her toes, but she's getting more annoyed that I won't let her jump big.

I've ridden her a few times at a walk, but she hasn't been ridden for real in over 10 months and all she wants to do is take off and jump stuff when I do.

How do I keep her happy without risking her hurting herself? I get worried about free lunging her too much because i know she can jump out easily. Our roundpen isn't well put together and our indoor isn't set up for riding currently.

What about setting up some more difficult courses? Not more difficult regarding height, but more of with the spacing and such. You can create small bounces, trios, interesting looking jumps, wide but low jumps that make her stretch, tighter turns...things that make her use her head. This will help her in the long run, as well as help cure her boredom.

Also work on her ground manners. Those will help when you get on her. Ask her to yeild to pressure at the poll, sides, shoulders, butt, etc- back on command, pivot...all of those things can be VERY good foundations to help bring her back.

At this point I'd probably start trying to get on her again. She may need soem firm riding for a while, and it might be good to have another person watching just in case, but once she understands that she can't just run off and do as she pleases, you can really get to work. Serpentines, small circles, lead changes, all of these things can be executed safely without a lot of risk of her being hurt- provided that you warm her up, cool her down, and condition her sufficiently.

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